


Risen

by thedevilchicken



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Force Ghost(s), M/M, Post-Star Wars: A New Hope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-02-07 03:41:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18612391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Obi-Wan has been haunting Vader since the moment he died.





	Risen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aurae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aurae/gifts).



"You sound ridiculous," Kenobi says. "Was the voice Palpatine's idea?" He crosses his arms and tucks them into his sleeves. He raises his brows. "I bet the voice was Palpatine's idea." 

Vader ignores him. He's not actually there, after all. He's completely incorporeal, so it's the only sensible thing to do. 

The worst part of it is, no one else can see him - it's only Vader who can, as he's stalking the corridors with the ghost of this one particular one of a thousand dead Jedi sweeping along behind him, glowing like a shadow in reverse. Or, the worst part is, he can't use the Force to make him shut his mouth because it turns out he _is_ the Force. There's no stopping him, and he's been there for weeks.

It shouldn't be possible but here he is in Vader's quarters, talking. Again. He's always talking. He was never this chatty in life. 

"And the outfit, Anakin." He gestures at him across the room, from the wall he's not technically leaning against because Vader thinks if he leaned, he'd go through it. "Was it meant to be intimidating? I'm sorry to say your new master has a rather questionable flair for the melodramatic." 

He's been ignoring him for weeks now, on and off, since a few hours after he first appeared. Of course, ignoring him doesn't make him stop; ignoring him seems to encourage him, but everything does that. For _weeks_ , he's barely stopped. It's wearing. Even more than breathing through a mask.

"You're the one still dressing like a Jedi twenty years after they all died," Vader says, and for a second it's jarring that his voice comes out so low, because this all takes him back to a time he doesn't want to be taken back to. 

Kenobi raises his brows. He refolds his arms. "Twenty years after you killed them," he replies, pointedly. "And you didn't kill all of us." 

"Most. Some of you got old."

Kenobi glances down at himself. His mouth twitches, not quite a smile. "I suppose we did," he replies.

He does look older - he looks a lot older. Wherever he's spent his time since that day on Mustafar, it's aged him more than life on Coruscant would have, though they both know continued life on Coruscant would have really been the death of him after Order 66. Vader would have killed him if the clones or the Coruscant police or any of a dozen bounty hunters hadn't. And Kenobi seems to acknowledge that because in a moment's strange glowing blue ripple, he changes. He makes it seem easy. Maybe it is, or maybe he puts in the effort just for him. 

Abruptly, the way he looks is younger, and leaner, less gray in his hair, ultimately more familiar than the old man he barely recognised except for in the Force. He looks like a memory plucked straight out of the dusty depths of Vader's head and played like a holocron projection right there in front of him, but he doesn't allow himself to find it jarring. He's tried to forget, but he doesn't let himself find it jarring.

Kenobi brushes imaginary dust from his tunic as if to underline the change, then he hops up onto the edge of Vader's desk. He swings his legs and stretches hugely, his arms above his head, but he has no muscles that need stretching. Vader doesn't recall him ever being so whimsical in life, but he's cured himself of that. 

"Why are you here?" Vader asks. 

"As you so eloquently reminded me, all my other friends are dead," Kenobi replies. 

"We're not friends." 

The conversation usually doesn't go so far. It usually stalls out once Vader has caused irreparable harm to any nearby furniture or Kenobi temporarily runs out of things to talk about. Kenobi frowns at him. His legs stop swinging. 

"We were once," he says. "We were friends for a long time, Anakin." 

Kenobi can't touch. He might as well be a holocron projection because Vader feels nothing when Kenobi walks across the room and rests one hand over the front of Vader's suit. He's not solid and that hand drifts through, and Vader can't feel it because there's nothing there. But he feels it anyway, like fingers wrapped around his heart, firm but careful. 

"We were more than friends," Kenobi says, his eyes averted, with his hand inside Vader's chest. Vader can feel the Force inside him. It feels familiar, like long hours of training, like fighting back to back with his damned caustic wit, like all the times he borrowed Obi-Wan's cloak and could smell him on the fabric. It feels like Kenobi wants to find some way he can forgive him, but Vader doesn't want to be forgiven. 

When he raises his hand, he doesn't expect to touch. He expects to put his hand straight into Kenobi's chest and find out if it felt different in there, but his glove nudges his shoulder. He's so surprised it takes a second for him to do much else and when he does, when he raises one synthetic hand to Kenobi's throat, his fingers close into a fist instead of on him. Kenobi shakes his head. He tuts. 

"I don't think I taught you that," he says. Vader doesn't like the way his face turns drawn and wary.

"What do you think you _did_ teach me?"

He shakes his head again. He shrugs. "Sometimes I wonder about that," he says, and he starts to pull his hand away, but Vader catches his wrist. Suddenly and unexpectedly he can feel it in his hand, feedback from the pressure sensors in his metallic fingers registering _solid_. He can feel the way his muscles shift as he flexes his fingers, and the shape of bones under his skin. 

Kenobi doesn't move away. He looks at Vader's hand that he's closed around his wrist and then up at the mask that covers his face. Vader knows if he wanted to, Kenobi could pull his wrist straight through his fingers or vanish into thin air, but he just looks at him and Vader can't help thinking he looks so much smaller than he used to, even if he's exactly the same. He has a neat parting in hair and a well-trimmed beard and his eyes are just as sharp as they ever were, like he knows exactly what he's thinking. 

Kenobi doesn't move away, and that's confusing. Kenobi rests his palm flat to Vader's chest instead of inside it. He raises both brows. 

"Why are you here?" Vader asks again. 

Kenobi doesn't answer; he just slips his hand back in, around his heart and lets that do the talking for him. It feels almost the same but with an edge he's never known before, like every time Kenobi told him _no_ , he wanted _yes_ , like every lie they ever told each other spills right out. The hand in his chest shouldn't make it harder to breathe but it does. This time, he can't help but find it jarring. 

Kenobi moves. He pushes him down and he hits the floor so hard he's almost surprised he doesn't break something, like his helmet or the fucking deck plates, then Kenobi straddles his chest to keep him down. He starts to struggle but before he even gets his hands up, both of Kenobi's are buried to the wrists inside his head. He disconnects. When Kenobi pulls him up, he also pulls him _out_.

"What did you do?" he says, but he knows what he's done because the rest of the room looks wrong, he can see his own body on the floor, and the only thing that looks real is Obi-Wan Kenobi. When he raises his hands, one of them is actually his own. He's not burned. His hair tickles his neck. He can breathe. He can _breathe_. And he knows that if he takes two steps back he'll be dragged back down into his body but he doesn't. He steps forward. 

First, he takes two handfuls of Kenobi's robe. The feel of the rough fabric under his hands is not enough, though; he pulls at it, enough to yank it out of place, enough to get down underneath it to the undershirt he just takes in both hands and tears straight down his chest with a ripping sound that sets his teeth on edge and startles Kenobi but not enough to make him step away. He puts his hand on Kenobi's chest, fingers splayed, and his skin's warm and his chest rises and falls with every too-fast breath and his lips part like he means to speak but he doesn't get a chance to. 

Anakin crushes their mouths together and the sound Obi-Wan makes, surprised and pleased and edged with desperation, sends a bolt of heat straight through him. Obi-Wan's hands are in his hair and then they're not, they're raking over the fabric of the tunic covering his back, they're gripping his backside to pull him flush against him and he stumbles back as Anakin stumbles forward until they're pressed against the edge of the desk he was just sitting on a couple of moments ago. Obi-Wan pulls himself up to sit on it and Anakin's mouth goes to the crook of his neck and then Obi-Wan's legs are hooked over his calves, leather boots against leather boots. His skin tastes like he always thought it would. When their mouths meet again, he almost wishes somebody would put a knife into his chest just so he never has to leave again. 

When he steps back to pull off his tunic and his undershirt, Obi-Wan sits there red-faced and strips himself to the waist just the same. When Anakin shoves his pants down to the top of his boots, Obi-Wan shuffles and lifts his hips and does the same. Anakin looks at him, sitting there blushing right down into his neck, hands on his bare thighs. He can see his fingers squeezing, the skin pressed down in white around his fingertips. And his cock is right there, thick and stiff and jutting up, moisture at the tip where the foreskin has shifted back. Anakin has seen him naked but not like this. 

"Anakin..." Obi-Wan says. His voice is unsteady. He grips harder at his thighs. Anakin's not far away - he hoists his pants by the waistband and he steps back in and Obi-Wan's ready to meet him. When they kiss, it's open-mouthed and wet and hot, Obi-Wan's tongue at Anakin's teeth and his fingers in his hair and there were times back at the Temple when all Anakin could think about was this, in his bed, in the night, one arm covering his face and one hand around his cock. There've been nights after Mustafar, when he's alone, when he's wished he'd killed him or wished he'd kissed him or wished he'd told him, _come with me_. Maybe he would have. Maybe they wouldn't be here, like this, with Obi-Wan wrapping one hand around him almost like he doesn't know how to not. Maybe he wouldn't have four mechanical limbs and Obi-Wan wouldn't be dead. 

He steps back abruptly. He stumbles back and Obi-Wan frowns and it's not real, _it's not real_ , except the moment he touches his body that's lying there on the floor he's sucked back in and it's over. Obi-Wan's still there, glowing, almost translucent, half naked and watching him until he turns his head and flickers. He's gone, and Anakin, _Vader_ , _Darth Vader_ , just lies there and aches. 

Kenobi is gone, but he'll be back again. Vader's not sure he ever really leaves. He thinks maybe he's always watching. He hopes he never comes back. If he hadn't already died, he'd kill him if he could. As he picks himself up, he tries to ignore the gnawing desire down in his gut. He's almost mostly successful. 

Obi-Wan Kenobi has been haunting him ever since his death. No one else has seen him. No one else has heard him. He won't leave him alone, at least not for long. He hopes he will; he has a job to do.

But the problem is, Vader hasn't told the emperor. As he leaves the room, he tries not to think about exactly what that means.


End file.
